


burn it like cedar

by duchamp



Category: Sicario (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 09:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6951412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchamp/pseuds/duchamp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Her on one side, them on the other. And isn’t that the way it’s always been?</em> </p>
<p>The world stays ugly. Kate, Alejandro, and Matt bridge the gap between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn it like cedar

 

 

 

I no longer have time for the playing out.

DEMOCRACY

 

 

2020.

 

 

The prosecution waits, their question still unanswered and lingering in the air.

Kate’s still as clear water under the grand jury panel’s scrutiny. Impassive and uninterested in her hiking boots and jeans. They almost didn’t allow her into the courtroom earlier. Standards and policy. Kiss the ring, wear business formal. She’s having none of that. These next several hours of her life she’s never going to get back.

The prosecution repeats their question. “Were you aware of any improprieties with…” And so on. To be classified later, blacked out chunks of text until all that’s left is merely a conglomeration of incoherent words. Context is everything.

Kate clears her throat, brings herself closer to the microphone and says, “Pleading the fifth, I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.”

 

 

 

Three weeks earlier, before the grand jury convenes, before Kate shows up at the halls of justice with a wet head and a bare face, Matt and Alejandro sit down on a bench by a pair of elevators traveling to the underground, a mass of bodies filing downward. To the left, everyone walks at their own pace. To the right, businessmen scurry forward, running as if fire is nipping at their shoes. It runs like an equation, the implied system of the metropolitan transit.

“She’s living here. In DC.” The baseball cap Matt wears is black and white, rim pulled low over his face. It’s stamped with the New York Yankee’s insignia. 

“Working for?” Alejandro inquires, tamping down any surprise at Kate Macer living in the political capital of the states.

“No clue. There’s no paper trail. All we have is an address.” Matt sounds annoyed. Mystified. Intrigued and slightly impressed.

“Then give me the address,” Alejandro says.

 

 

 

The apartment she lives in is on the seventh floor. Yet it might as well be on the twenty-seventh story up or higher, as the elevator ride takes so long. A welcoming ring sounds as it stops on every level. One, a white-haired woman wrapped in knitted wool enters. Two, a young couple who hang on each other. Three, an average picturesque family, 2 ½, a mother and a father with a boy, a girl, and one on the way. Four, a throng of wet and rowdy children coming from the community pool. Five, a quiet student type with rimmed glasses holding a cat under her arm. Luckily, there’s no stop on the sixth.

Alejandro steps out into the hallway once the elevator reaches the seventh. The wall, all pink stucco, a thin film of mold covering its expanse, has a sign which greets him. Reading, 3B units to the left. So he turns, walks down the corridor as it shrinks in on itself. Uneven terrain, the ceiling lights flickering off and on. Her door is the one nearest to the tail end of the hallway, because of course it is. The lock gives easily, the bobby pin pressed against Alejandro’s thumb manipulating the knob’s mechanizations, twisting its gears, whines loudly when he lets himself inside. 

Kate’s studio apartment is a practiced art. A shelter, a holding area. Not a home. Not even a room, really. There’s no furniture, nothing of sentimental value. The fridge is empty except for bottled water and stacked take out. There’s a mattress on the floor, made up, sheets tucked economically at the ends. There’s a floor lamp beside it, the shade bent. A suitcase is wedged into one of the far reaching corners; a small window as well, there, above, in the jut between walls. Alejandro goes to look out, but grey-ash brambles crisscross in a thicket above the windowsill and venture out further, over the glass, obscuring any view to be had.

Closed off. A nearly empty space. Unadorned, meant to be abandoned at a moment’s notice. Alejandro surveys it for a second time, retraces his steps. The living area, the kitchen, the bathroom, an unused shoebox of a closet. Last, he crouches on the floor. One final facet of the assignment, no stone left unturned. He lays Kate’s suitcase alongside his knees and opens it, rifling through a catalogue of denim boot-cuts, white short-sleeves, sports bras, and briefs. Nothing remarkable. Textbook day to day essentials. Zipping the suitcase closed, he rights it. Wheels on the floor, handle facing up. Kate’s presence is seemingly there at his back, filling the void, like the absence of any real trace of her has created a vacuum demanding to be fed.

Alejandro leaves, reports back to Matt: she’s learned.

 

 

 

“She plead the fifth,” Matt tells him over the phone. Astonishment colors his tone, word already having traveled up the chain of command, whispers from one ear to the next and then onto Graver, the dirty laundry from half a decade back still not let out to air.

Kate hasn’t even stepped outside of the courthouse yet.

Alejandro knows she must have been the whistleblower’s golden egg, wonders why she kept her mouth shut. The picture he’s kept in his mind’s eye always has her itching to tell the truth of their operations in Juárez and Chandler, making voice of those who wronged her.

He’s hidden, sheltered under arched shade, when he catches sight of Kate after the deposition. Meat still hasn’t managed to stick to her bones. Her cheeks are gaunt, framed by the hair she wears down to rest at her shoulders. Plainly dressed and completely inappropriate. Leather jacket, boots and all. She’s mere feet from him, two columns down, and if she bothered to twist a little more to her left she might see him, ghost of Christmas past and present merged into one.

 

 

 

Crisis management have their opportunistic hands in the cookie jar now. A wealthy client comes up with a cartel bounty on their head or another issue altogether, and a PR team has to spin public consensus and bury evidence while field agents handle the rest. Leaving Alejandro and Matt to make nice and shake hands in a privately owned DC firm. Interests do align. The partnership’s potential pay-off offers more cash to line the CIA’s and DEA’s coffers than even they know what to do with.

They’re seated at a polished glass top table, million dollar pieces of artwork adorning the walls. Fresh flowers are everywhere. The place smells like a florist’s. Matt’s about to choke on the stench. Alejandro just keep his eyes trained on the door to the room. It opens, the waiting period over. And there she is, looking exactly the same as she did at the courthouse. Well, her employment’s no longer a mystery anymore. Kate nods to them both, says their last names in greeting, taking her seat across the table. Her on one side, them on the other. And isn’t that the way it’s always been?

“Macer,” Matt responds, undemonstrative. He’s the only one who keeps up a dialogue. Alejandro doesn’t.

“It’s a smear campaign,” Kate informs them, all work, no pretense. “Our client refused to front one of Los Zetas’ legitimate businesses. Extortion. Now they’re wiping their asses with his sparking clean image and hoping it comes away dirty, covered in their shit.”

Matt lets out a bark of laughter. “They’re attacking his _image_. He’s lucky they haven’t gone for his limbs.”

“Psychological tactics are sometimes more effective,” Kate says, eyebrows knitting together, staring at Matt like he’s disappointed her. Like he’s obtuse. “And what’s more important to a wealthy hedge fund manager who lives alone? His social status. A positive public image. Tarnish that, you tarnish everything. The lies being thrown around involve forged documents, linking our client to criminal activity he’s had no part of. Not great dinner party fodder, I’d think.”  

“Alright,” Matt gives. “So where do we come in?”

“Well, that’s the fun part. My employers handle media fallout. We get to team up and poke holes in these dry cleaning businesses.”

Matt caps off the conversation. “Sounds like a gas,” he says, while him and Alejandro stand to part ways. Kate stays where she is. Niceties have no place here, not after one man’s slammed you to the ground and the other’s held you at gunpoint. Then, at the door; “Nice seeing you again, Kate.” Matt’s cocksure need to have the last word never fails.

Kate takes the bait, rears forward a bit, looks at Matt like she wants to dislocate his every limb, then sit back and watch him squirm after. Her eyes narrow, slits with no iris or pupil or color either. A second passes. Kate’s body relaxes within that time frame, a switch flipping, any and all tension leaving her at once. She’s composed again, a picture of uniform calm. A quirk of her lips, then she says, dismissive, with a click of her tongue, “Fuck off, Graver.”

 

 

 

Her coworkers call her, “Kay.”

Kay’s good, they say. Kay’s the best, they assure. And—Kay’s an odd one. Kay’s quiet. Kay doesn’t have any friends. Kay. Kate Macer by another name. It’s appropriate, the distinction apt. Kate’s a different animal now. Walks and talks as she did with Matt’s task force, but something’s irrevocably shifted.

“You were in my apartment,” she mentions, from left field. She taps the heel of her boot against the cement floor. The sound is magnified, reverberating through the airport hanger’s wide space. A jet taxis onto the landing strip in front, moving towards Alejandro and her. Matt hasn’t shown yet.

Lined up side by side, still an adequate distance between them, Alejandro tries to muster a response. He ends up stating the obvious. “You don’t seem surprised by that.”

“I’m not,” Kate says. “I expected it, once I was subpoenaed. I’m only surprised by things I don’t expect.”

“You expect most things?” Alejandro asks.

“Most things,” Kate parrots back, laughter in her voice, “yes.”

 

 

 

The jet lands in Laredo, Texas. Dry, brown, homespun southern hospitality at every corner. The exact opposite of the wet, blue, cold indifference making up DC’s cutthroat terrain. Kate goes her own way, says, “I’ll see you two tomorrow,” to Matt and Alejandro before hailing the cab she called to take her from the tarmac.  

“Works for a multimillion dollar crisis management firm, and she still looks like she shops from the rack at Kmart’s Bluelight Special,” Matt tuffs. The cab driver takes Kate’s one suitcase, loads it into the trunk, and off they go. “I want you to do more digging,” Matt says to Alejandro once the cab disappears from eyeshot. “What did her coworkers tell you?”

“That she keeps to herself,” Alejandro answers. “She doesn’t have any friends, but she’s friendly enough with mostly anyone. They say she’s good.”

“I suppose we’ll find out for ourselves,” Matt says.

“They call her Kay.” There’s no reason to mention the nickname. But Alejandro does it anyway, likes the way the syllable sounds in his mouth.

 

 

 

Here’s what Kate, ‘Kay,’ Macer is hiding—nothing. Because there’s nothing for her to hide. Nothing of hers has any substantial value, and she’s kept it that way since her first foray into intelligence. It rankles, sometimes. Others, it actually hurts, a phantom pang. A fleeting need for sentimental tokens, for a call list filled with numbers she could ring up, for people she could have a beer and a conversation with. But she cut those ties. She crossed that bridge, made it to the other side and blew the flank to scrap so she could never go back.

Which makes it that much easier to present Alejandro with a USB drive. Her digital footprint, all five years worth, bank records and past addresses and every single goddamn receipt. “For Graver,” she says. “Since he says ‘jump’ and you say ‘how high.’ It’s all here. Every bit of me.”

Alejandro seems, well, fascinated, if anything. “I’ll bring it to him,” he says, holding out his hand. Kate’s fingers brush against his when she places the drive into his open palm.

 

 

 

Nine to five shifts like clockwork. Clean cut employees. No suspicious activity. Eyes on the same storefronts. Day in, day out. Empty handed, still. “They’re too careful.” Alejandro says, watching as the drycleaner’s manager flips the sign on the entrance from ‘open’ to ‘closed.’ He picks up Windex and paper towel after, goes over to the radio perched by the cash register and turns on 106.1 FM; music so loud, traveling all the way out to the surveillance van. Same as yesterday, and the entire week before. Same as the other five drycleaners they’ve spotted and spied on. “I know a dead end when I see one. We need another angle.”

“I could try to get my hands on their books,” Kate offers, smacking away at a gum wad, winter-fresh mint green, in her mouth. She kicked off her boots four hours back. Socked feet crossed over each other, propped up on the dash. “Sometimes financial inconsistencies get hidden in the footnotes before they send the ledgers to the IRS. If I can pin something, even if it’s small, perhaps I can spook them with it.”

“Get them to play clean up,” Alejandro finishes.

“Exactly,” Kate agrees. “Lead us to bigger fish. They’ll start scrambling if they’re scared.”

“Or simply unload half a mag into your chest,” Alejandro counters. “Or worse.”

Kate’s talking about playing a game of chicken with Los Zetas. Rifling feathers to see if she can get a rise like it’s nothing. And she has the nerve to spit her gum out into a napkin and respond, casual, so fucking casual, “When did you become such a pussy?”

“Just don’t want you getting yourself hurt,” Alejandro says.

Always count on honesty to earn you silence. Kate opens her mouth as if to say something, closes it. Minutes lapse. Then—“Didn’t know you cared, Gillick.”

 

 

 

Three knocks to Matt’s hotel room door sound, nearing midnight. Alejandro peers through the peephole, flips the deadbolt, opening the entryway wide. Kate waltzes right past him and unloads a stack of binders, twelve inches deep, onto the sofa where Matt sits.

“How did you—” Matt stares blankly at Kate, at her found treasury. He holds a tablet in his hands, progress report being typed out and sent to government handlers in DC.

Kate hugs several leftover binders to her chest. “Well, that’s for me to know…”

“… and for me to find out.” Matt starts to investigate the stack on the sofa, setting his tablet aside. “Okay. If you want to play it like that.”

“Job for three,” Kate says, gesturing to the monthly ledgers. Documented financials, ripe for the taking. “The both of you can comb through those. See what you find. And these,” she holds out the load in her arms, “I’ll sift through.”

 

 

 

Kate’s instincts are right. A gold mine, if ever there was one. Hidden skimming in the footnotes. Generalized code words such as ‘the house’ and ‘dock shipment’ and ‘backdoor.’ Missing cash. Small increments, spread thin in the ledgers over months. Enough to go straight to the FBI, to have a warrant issued and an investigation pending into all six cleaners. Does the trick like a charm. The harassment against Kate’s client drops since Los Zetas has bigger fish to fry, a string of legitimate businesses under scrutiny definitely qualifying as bad news bears. No one gets shot and everyone keeps their limbs. 

Which is all well and good, but having rough skies during the trip back to DC doesn’t do anyone any favors. Turbulence comes and goes. Light rain patters against the jet, coiled moisture stretching and breaking apart in obscure treks. A red-eye flight, previous attempts to leave delayed due to mechanical troubles. The cabin’s lights are dim, only the floor panels lit and Alejandro’s overhead on for reading. Matt’s asleep in his seat, monotone snoring scoring the hours until the capital comes into view. Kate’s out as well, neck bent at an awkward angle, chin resting on her shoulder, her longest stretch of shut-eye since she was startled when the jet last hit a patch of soiled air.

It doesn’t last, though. The jet jerks from tail to nose once more, a full body tremor, and Kate jumps awake again. Squeezing her armrests tight, muscles coiled. Still gun shy when it comes to being in the sky. “We should be landing in two and a half hours,” Alejandro mentions, mid-paragraph on a page in his book. Comfort dressed up as fact.

“Great,” Kate says, anxiously worrying at her hands. She takes a breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. “Matt offered me a job,” she states, later, once they’re entering Washington territory. “Nearly doubled my asking price when DC upped my salary, trying to keep me.”  

Alejandro closes his book, eyes Kate’s form. “Having a competition over your services. Congratulations.” A congested pause. He swallows, decides to say, “Don’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t accept the offer,” Alejandro clarifies.

Kate smirks. “Still doling out unsolicited advice.”

“Listen to me,” Alejandro says. “Don’t listen to me. Your decision.”

“You’re right,” Kate says. “It is.”

And Alejandro can see the wheels turning in her head. He knows now that it was a miscalculation, on his end, to say anything.  Kate sees his dissent as a dare. She’ll take the job, in all likelihood. Any other choice would be an admittance of failure.

 

 

 

“You’ve changed,” Matt observes, once Kate’s in his employ, during their first outing together as actual colleagues. Only the both of them. An odd pair and a strong one.

Kate knows what he’s doing. Digging. Trying to cajole her into spilling personal touches, to fill in gaps the USB drive might not have provided for. The sad thing is, there isn’t anything else to disclose. Only the truth. Simply, “I had two of the best teachers in the world.”

 

 

2021.

 

 

Testimony is easily bought. These are the facts. Memories are fickle and unique. With each individual they shift. Perspectives change. Images morph. Words are twisted. Exchanges are forgotten. Cash slipped from one hand to the next and a memory can conveniently disappear. Three years old, and her mother won’t testify. Three years old, and the only way for her mother to pay for her hospital bills is to accept a check from the men who put her there. “Handle Kate,” Matt says; waiting room crowded, vending machines nearly empty, the sorry excuse for a protective detail sent packing before Alejandro got there. “I can’t have her screwing us on this.”

“She’s not keeping it close to the vest?” Alejandro asks. Sure, Kate’s been a specter in his periphery lately. But it doesn’t seem like her to go off the reservation. Kate Macer of Chandler, Arizona would. No doubt. But not the Kate, ‘Kay,’ Macer of now. Children have a way of muddying the waters, though. Stirring up the bog.

“Last I checked she was telling me to fuck myself six ways from Sunday. Now that’s how she usually talks to me, but her going off to a local dive to drink like a goddamn fish while we still have work to do is a problem.”

“You put a tracker on her,” Alejandro states. The chip could be embedded in Kate’s cell, in her car, in the seam of her purse. All or more.

“I put a tracker on her,” Matt confirms. “You still have influence, there. I want you to handle this.”

“You should mind your own business,” Alejandro says.

“The both of you are my business,” Matt replies. “She’s seven blocks down the way. I’ll send the address to your phone. Take care of it.”

 

 

 

Kate’s bent over the bar. Multiple drinks emptied, ice melting, puddles forming on the counter where the glasses aren’t placed on coasters. She hates being affected by cases. She also comes to the conclusion she has the stomach for another beer before her coordination goes all to hell and she falls off her stool. “Otro trago,” she calls, signaling the bartender.

“Your accent has gotten better.” Alejandro takes the stool next to hers, and Kate chuckles. A little bit manic, mostly frustrated.  It’s amazing, really, how easily her memory can draw up his features on a whim.

She rubs at her eyes, blinks once then twice. “I’m much more drunk than I thought,” she says.  

“No,” Alejandro corrects. “I’m very real. And you still have the tolerance of a horse.”

Kate slides her arm across the counter, touches Alejandro’s elbow. Bent on the wooden surface, supporting his weight as he leans to the side. His sleeve is the usual neutral color, the same tailored linen and polyester blend. Yes, very real indeed. “Let me guess,” she says. “Matt’s got a tracker on me, doesn’t he?”

Alejandro nods. “I came from the hospital.”

“She was…” Kate falters, the words sticky and stuck in her mouth. She grits her teeth, manages. “Half her face was gone before they did the skin graft, and her mother—”

“Come home with me,” Alejandro says.

The bartender walks over with dark brew leveled to the rim. Kate grabs hold of the glass, lifts it to her lips. “I’m going to finish this beer first.”

 

 

 

She’s hasn’t seen him since the Philippines. She hasn’t seen him since Manila. She’s hasn’t seen him since Fort Santiago. And Alejandro just happens to be in Cartagena tonight, after the monumental mess at the hospital, after she’s been swimming in liquor and not even thinking about coming up for breath. It’s all completely, patently, Matt. Kate would almost find it funny if she wasn’t so disgusted. Her and Alejandro’s not-quite relationship has been an open secret between the three of them, and it stands to reason Matt would use it to his advantage. Kate supposes there’s never not anything he won’t use.

“I’m your errand, then,” she says, once they’re inside Alejandro’s apartment. His arm is wrapped around her, keeping her steady, her legs about as shaky as a newborn colt’s. Alejandro tsks, doesn’t justify Kate’s observation with a response. He tries to maneuver her to the single chair in the living room but Kate plants her feet, stops still in the foyer, twists in his grasp. She turns into him, face buried in his chest, and reaches for his belt.

“You’re going to regret this in the morning,” Alejandro murmurs against the crown of her head, leaving Kate to let out a put-upon sigh. Because she honestly believed they’d gotten past this sometimes prelude they do. The ring-around-the-rosy of denials and ‘only this once’ morning after dialogues. Sure she’d told him to shove it in Manila, but that’s not the point. She’s gotten used to not expecting much from him, just as he’s never expected anything at all from her. And right now she’s drunk and sad and righteously angry at Matt and she’d really like to get laid, alright?  

“It’s a habit with you,” Kate says to him, into his shirt, “you know that? Telling me what I’m going to feel, what I should do.” She punctuates the words with an importunate tug at his belt.

Alejandro’s hand, the one not at the small of her back, comes down to cover hers. But instead of stopping her, he merely finishes the job and unhooks the buckle. “Closing arguments,” he tells her, barely audible, an echo of the lawyer still left in him. Then he pulls at her hair, yanks her head back, moves to place an openmouthed kiss at her neck. Tongue followed by teeth when he bites down, only just, only enough, and Kate gasps. She tries to make a joke in response, something petulant like, “Missed me much?” Yet the alcohol has made her thoughts slippery like minnows in a pond, hard to latch onto, and the barb doesn’t make it past her lips.

She pushes at him though, fingers curled into fists against his chest, managing to knock him slightly off balance, illustrating her counterpoint another way. Bravado, not much unlike Alejandro’s own, and Kate grips his chin and kisses him. Mostly teeth, spit. He meets her move for move and it’s not romantic, it’s not kind. Kate figures this is why she likes it.

It’s simple. Uncomplicated.

 

 

 

“Children,” the doctor starts; stops, sees Kate’s attention is drifting elsewhere, his opinion weightless. He tries again, clearing his throat. “Children are resilient,” he says. “Be assured by that.”

Kate checks her watch, calculating the time it will take her to make it from the hospital to the airport. One place to the next. A penciled check in a square box. Another report. A three-year old in a hospital bed, a brand new face and a life rearranged. A three-year old who was an unassuming bystander to the murder of a state’s witness. She’d waddled out onto a back lawn for her missing red ball. She found her red ball, a man on his way to becoming a body in the morgue, and five assailants who were in Matt Graver’s specs for quite some time. Got a bullet in the face for her trouble and, when it came to the attention of her shooters she survived, a paid-off mother.

“Yes,” Kate says, slinging her purse over her shoulder, faux politeness making her sick, “I suppose they are.” She slides on her sunglasses and her sweater. Her arms are sore, which is entirely Alejandro’s fault. “Thank you for your time, but I should go. My flight leaves soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lionsgate: We're doing a follow-up focusing on Alejandro's character. We've got Benicio Del Toro signed and revving to go. Might be a sequel, very well could be a prequel. You know how we do. 
> 
> Me: *cautiously optimistic* Eh, and you know me. Take all my money. 
> 
> Lionsgate: Scratch that. Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, and Josh Brolin are all on board. It's gonna be a sequel. And we're trying to move heaven and earth to get Dennis Villeneuve back. And you know Roger Deakins comes attached to that genius ass. 
> 
> Me: *writes fic, runs a marathon, skydives, sings an aria* GOD EXISTS.


End file.
